Sunday, April 01, 2012

Jamie Moyer is 49 years old and has made the Rockies’ rotation—as the No. 2 starter!—meaning this will be his 25th season in Major League Baseball.

Below, thanks to my wonderful editor, is a compilation of Moyer’s baseball cards from the beginning. It’s chronological per season, starting in the upper-left. Obviously, the picture in the middle isn’t a baseball card, but it’s this season.

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The picture is not mirror-imaged, unless the arm-patch, the billboards and the glove logo were also originally printed in reverse (like when righty Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig would hit the ball and run to third base before the print was reversed in The Pride of The Yankees).

Click here to see the card which you can then click and see a 4x zoom image (1992 Toledo Mud Hens Fleer/ProCards #1042 - Jamie Moyer).

Thanks, I figured it must have been something like that, given how there've been reprint sets of the 1951 Bowman and 1952 and 1953 Topps sets, and probably others. I always liked the cards with no name on the front (the 1953 Bowmans were also captionless) because you and your friends could quiz each other on their identities.

So, there's a link on that page to the Jamie Moyer All-Stars, the best lineup of players that were teammates of Moyer for any amount of time. Naturally, it's a pretty impressive list - the starters are so great the writer had to leave off King Felix and Roy Halladay. But the best catcher he ever had as a teammate is ... Carlos Ruiz? That's a bit odd.

The amazing thing about Moyer is that after 1992, you would have never figured Moyer would still be in baseball at 35, let alone 49. It's not like he's a guy who was a stud in his prime years, and has just hung on for all those years afterwards. He wasn't a good pitcher before he turned 30.

Seeing those cards is amazing. I have the first two. I was 13-14 and living in Chicago at the time. When he came to the Orioles 1993 and had one of his first good seasons as a starter, I was 20 and in college. I remember thinking, "wow! Jaime Moyer is making a comeback."

Wonder how many other players have twice had a full year gap in their careers? Probably quite a few. Be interesting to see who has had the most 'x year' gaps in their ML career.

I think his ERA+ is interesting too...
80 in 1986 to 105 in 1988, dropped to 65 in 1991, 130 in 1993, back to 92 in 1995, 150 in 1996, 83 in 2000, 132 in 2003, 87 in 2004, 105 in 2006, 91 in 2007, 118 in 2008, 85 in 2009 - so he flipped from sub-100 to above 100 6 times in his career...so far. If he can somehow go above 100 this year he'd have 7 shifts from sub-100 to above which requires a minimum of a 14 year career. Could anyone have done that more often?

FYI: He holds the record for HR given up. He is 19 starts from catching Tom Seaver for 15th all-time. I don't think he is near the top 20 in anything else though.

Well, he's 6th in ER allowed, and seems likely to move into at least 3rd this season (only 23 more to pass Sutton for that spot). Probably needs 3 full seasons to pass Cy Young for #1, which is also the minimum it would likely take for him to get to 300 wins.

A full season will get him into the top 25 in hits allowed as well (currently 33rd), but it will take 2 to get him into the top 20. 3 full seasons gets him pretty close to top 10, where he's currently 617 behind John for 10th or 570 behind Maddux for 11th. He might not crack the top 25 in IP even with 3 seasons, though.

Well, he's 6th in ER allowed, and seems likely to move into at least 3rd this season (only 23 more to pass Sutton for that spot). Probably needs 3 full seasons to pass Cy Young for #1, which is also the minimum it would likely take for him to get to 300 wins.

I don't care if it is earned runs, breaking a record of Cy Young's would be impressive.

The modern record for R allowed is apparently Phil Niekro at 2337, 301 ahead of Moyer who's in 11th (the record goes up to almost 3500 if you included 19th century guys, but those guys were giving up ~1000 UER). Moyer should finish this season somewhere between 3rd (94 runs away) and 7th (20 away), and should eclipse Ryan for 2nd some time next year pretty easily if he gets regular time as a SP between now and then.

I like the one where he's a righthanded pitcher.
I wonder if it's a joke or if it got switched around.
My guess is that he didn't have his glove when they took the picture, and they only had a right-handed glove lying around.

my guess from his expression and the digit poking out of the glove is that the only thing that got flipped was the viewer.

I think Mike Stanley, who Moyer played with both in Texas and Boston, is the best catcher. It's close between Stanley and Lieberthal, but yeah Ruiz isn't really in the conversation unless he puts up another 4 or 5 good years.

Moyer could easily end up playing with someone who winds up remaining active until 2030 or later.

This deal with the Rockies should at least help out with that sort of thing - playing for the Phillies of recent years is not a great way to be teamed up with precocious young stars. (Antonio Bastardo and Vance Worley notwithstanding)

The modern record for R allowed is apparently Phil Niekro at 2337, 301 ahead of Moyer who's in 11th (the record goes up to almost 3500 if you included 19th century guys, but those guys were giving up ~1000 UER). Moyer should finish this season somewhere between 3rd (94 runs away) and 7th (20 away), and should eclipse Ryan for 2nd some time next year pretty easily if he gets regular time as a SP between now and then.